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Ginger Beer or Pop

A homemade ginger beer made with sugar, ginger, water, yeast, and cream of tartar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Ginger Beer or Pop

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ginger beer

  1. Combine white sugar, cream of tartar, and bruised ginger root in a large container.

  2. Pour in 2 gallons of boiling water and stir well.

  3. Add 1 teacup of hop yeast and mix.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Let the mixture stand for 24 hours.

  2. After 24 hours, bottle the ginger beer for use.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Cream + gingertop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

White sugar
Provides the sugar that the yeast ferments, producing the drink's carbonation and alcohol and its sweetness.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that gives the drink a tangy, sharp flavor.
Bruised ginger root
Supplies the ginger aroma and spicy flavor.
Hop yeast
Ferments the sugar, creating carbonation and the characteristic fizz.

The step that matters

Bottling after 24 hours. Yeast keeps fermenting gas in sealed bottles, so bottling too late can build pressure that may burst them. Bottle when the mixture is actively fizzing, and use sturdy bottles.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Peppermintfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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